There are many often life dependent situations in which a product or substance must be kept under a strict temperature range for a given amount of time, yet may need to travel to areas that do not have an established power grid or availability of a large, consistent power supply. In many areas of society, there is a pressing need for such a method of transporting various objects or substances over long distances and time spans, while maintaining the substances at constant temperature or within various temperature ranges. For example, the organs, vaccines, medicine, and food benefit greatly from reliable means of temperature regulation during transport. For instance, the World Health Organization states that 4.3 million deaths occur each year due to vaccine preventable diseases and that many of these deaths could be averted if cold chain (i.e., the intricate system for vaccine transport, delivery, and administration) technologies for keeping vaccines above their freeze-sensitive range and below their heat-sensitive range were more efficient. First response disaster relief may also benefit from reliable and portable means for temperature regulated medicine transport.
The current mode of vaccine transport involves packing vaccines with phase-change materials such as conventional/dry ice, which are then carried by foot, horse, motorbike, etc. from cities to rural medical outreach centers. Since vaccines must be kept within a strict temperature range of 2-8° C. (36-46° F.) and may no longer be viable if the temperature deviates outside this range, this presents a great problem as strict temperature control is extremely difficult to maintain during the final destination journeys from the cities to the rural areas and account for 75-80% of all vaccine wastage alone. In addition, phase-change materials such as ice have freezing and melting temperatures that do not match the desired temperature range suitable for the vaccines, thus placing vaccines at the risk of wastage even when the heat absorption properties of the phase-change material is still viable. The passive nature of such phase-change materials also leaves certain regions of the vaccine carrier to have lower temperature than others, resulting in uneven cooling. Moreover, since the tendency is to bring more vaccines than are needed in an area, once the cooling source evaporates or expires, the excess vaccines also go to waste.
There are a number of transport systems in existence for maintaining consistent temperature controls. However, these known systems fail to meet the highly specific requirements for transporting sensitive substances, such as vaccines. Generally, two main issues present these failures. The first failure being sufficient temperature regulation of the environment in which these substances are transported. Most environmental control devices or “cold carriers” currently utilized are simply coolers using ice packs. The adaptability to varying environments and substances in terms of temperature regulation using these cold carriers is quite limited in flexibility of temperature. The second failure is transportability. The prior art includes refrigerated transport units, which can control the temperature of their internal environments. However, most of these are not designed for single or multiple person portability. Rather, these known refrigerated transport units generally require a powerful consistent and accessible power supply, which is typically not available in many areas of the world.
Thus, there is a need in the field of transportation of temperature sensitive products to create a new and useful environmentally adaptable device to overcome the disadvantages and drawbacks of the prior art. There is also a need for a transport device able to adapt to varying environments and products requirements in terms of temperature regulation and temperature consistency over time. Additionally, there is a need for a transport device that offers adaptable transportability and power requirements for the control of internal temperature and environment, while being designed (e.g., both compact and ergonomically designed) for single or multiple person portability. This invention provides such a new and useful device.